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Dale 1 Dominique Dale Professor Adams English 102-902 3 March 2014 The Reliance and Perception of Marriage of Janie Crawford Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God tells about the life of Janie Crawford. Janie’s mother, who suffers a tragic moment in her life, resulting in a mental breakdown, is left for her grandmother to take care of her. Throughout Janie’s life, she comes across several different men, all of which end in a horrible way. All the men that Janie married had a different perception of marriage. After the third husband, Janie finally returns to her home. It is at a belief that Janie is seeking someone who she can truly love, and not someone her grandmother chooses for her. Although Janie eventually lives a humble life, Janie’s quest is questionable. In the beginning years of Janie’s life, there were two people who she is dependent on. Her grandmother is Nanny, and her first husband is named Logan Killicks. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, “Janie, an attractive woman with long hair, born without benefit of clergy, is her heroine” (Forrest). Janie’s grandmother felt that Janie needs someone to depend on before she dies and Janie could no longer depend on her. In the beginning, Janie is very against the marriage. Nanny replied with, “’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, its protection. ...He done spared me...a few days longer till Ah see you safe in life” (Hurston 18). Nanny is sure to remind Janie that she needs a man in her life for safety, thus making Janie go through life with that thought process. Dale 2 Janie sees Logan Killicks' perception of marriage. In the beginning, it seems like that Logan is a very nice man, who is always treating her well. “Janie felt glad of the thought, fo... ... middle of paper ... ..., she found her identity. It did not come easy for Janie. It took her years to find out who she really was. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, everyone has different ideas of what marriage is. In the end Janie learned marriage is what you make of it. Love can only be found when your beliefs match with an others idea. Even today people find out the hard way that they are not compatible and that one’s view of marriage is different. This can be seen every day between couples who separate and among others whose marriages last the rest of their lives. Life is a learning process and we must take the bad with the good. Instead of searching for a nourishing life, Janie searched for someone to rely on. Although they were different types of reliance, she jumped from person to person so that she would not have to face life alone.
Perceptions of Marriage in Their Eyes Were Watching God & nbsp; For generations marriage has been accepted as a bond between two people. However, the ideals involved in marriage differ by the individuals. involved. The book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston. clearly demonstrates these differences. In the book a girl by the name Janie was raised by her grandmother and then married to her grandmother. Originally all Janie knew of marriage and love was her grandmother. tells her. As Janie moves on in her life and re-marries, she finds that everybody has their own idea about the role of their spouses in marriage.
Of least significance to Janie is her first husband, Logan Killicks. Hurston uses pathos to show that Janie and her first husband are not meant to be even though society thinks otherwise. Nanny thinks that Logan is really made for Janie, but Janie doesn’t love Logan. Janie tells Nanny, “Cause you told me Ah
(Feminism In Their Eyes Were Watching God). Instead of having to depend on a husband, for the first time Janie relied completely on herself (The Concept of Love and Marriage in Zora Neale Hurston 's Their Eyes Were Watching God). With Joe gone, Janie was free to let her hair down and bring her voice back to life (Feminism In Their Eyes Were Watching God). After the way that Joe treated Janie throughout their marriage, she was not depressed over his death, and instead enjoyed her independence through being a widow (Feminism In Their Eyes Were Watching God). As Janie had said, “’Tain’t dat Ah worries over Joe’s death, Phoeby. Ah jus’ loves dis freedom” (Hurston 93). Logan and Joe did not compliment Janie through marriage, because they did not truly love her (The Concept of Love and Marriage in Zora Neale Hurston 's Their Eyes Were Watching God). Due to Janie’s transformation in voice and independence over her first two marriages, she desired to have a loving marriage where she would be free to be
Zora Neale Hurston’s tour de force novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is told through the voice of Janie Crawford. Janie yearns to experience true love, as well has have a sense of self worth. In her early years these two ideas are intermingled, one cannot simply exist without the other. As she ages and goes through the trials and tribulations of love, she comes to find that the two are not mutually exclusive.
The book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about Janie Crawford and her quest for self-independence and real love. She finds herself in three marriages, one she escapes from, and the other two end tragically. And throughout her journey, she learns a lot about love, and herself. Janie’s three marriages were all different, each one brought her in for a different reason, and each one had something different to teach her, she was forced into marrying Logan Killicks and hated it. So, she left him for Joe Starks who promised to treat her the way a lady should be treated, but he also made her the way he thought a lady should be. After Joe died she found Tea Cake, a romantic man who loved Janie the way she was, and worked hard to provide for her.
Throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston displays the development of Janie Crawford as an idealistic 16 year-old to a confident woman. Over the course of the novel, Janie attempts to define herself as a woman, first marrying for stability, then adventure, and finally for happiness within herself. Janie’s search for identity is complicated due to prior situations and influential expectations. Nanny’s trials and distorted view on the purpose of marriage lead Janie to an undesired relationship. At the beginning of the novel, Janie’s grandmother witnesses her indulging in her first kiss.
Born a victim of circumstance, Janie, the main character, was subject to her position in life. She was raised to uphold the standards of the early African-American generation. From the beginning, she was taught to be passive and subject to whatever life gave her. As she grew older, she began to realize that she must give in to her desires and not suppress them.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford, the protagonist, constantly faces the inner conflicts she has against herself. Throughout a lot of her life, Janie is controlled, whether it be by her Nanny or by her husbands, Logan Killicks and Joe Starks. Her outspoken attitude is quickly silenced and soon she becomes nothing more than a trophy, only meant to help her second husband, Joe Starks, achieve power. With time, she no longer attempts to stand up to Joe and make her own decisions. Janie changes a lot from the young girl laying underneath a cotton tree at the beginning of her story. Not only is she not herself, she finds herself aging and unhappy with her life. Joe’s death become the turning point it takes to lead to the resolution of her story which illustrates that others cannot determine who you are, it takes finding your own voice and gaining independence to become yourself and find those who accept you.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford, the heroine of the novel is the first Black female character in African American fiction to embark on a journey of self discovery and achieve independence and self understanding (Novels For Students 303). She enters several marriages with many thoughts but of them all, she has universal expectations for each, those expectations are that she will be treated with the utmost respect and if it isn’t present at the beginning, "love will come" no matter what. Though she has three of her serious relationships, Janie does not ever have desires met, even with the one she loved most, Tea Cake. Janie spends much of her life in search of her happiness to find in the end that, she must first make herself happy before she can take enjoyment from others. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford goes through life as a young and spoiled child to a woman of deep endearment over the course of three marriages and relationships. She experiences three men whom are all flawed yet each gives Janie an important aspect of character. She takes from each man a sense of herself; from Logan Killicks, self-worth, from Joe Starks, self-respect, and from Tea Cake, her final husband, love and soulfulness.
True love is known to be one of the most desired things in the world. Subjects who try to find true love, face many complications along the way. In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston established the difficulties within relationships through Janie’s personal experiences. Janie, the main charter, married three men in the story and never really found true love that lasted forever. Zora Neale Hurston is able to demonstrate the struggles of life and love beautifully in her novel, as Janie experiences a roller coaster of events. She is able to paint the reader a picture of Janie's struggles by using figurative language throughout the story. Through her forced relationship with Logan, being controlled by Joe, and the tragic
One of the underlying themes Zora Neale Hurston put in her book, Their Eyes Were Watching God was feminism. Hurston used each of Janie’s three marriages to represent Janie moving closer to her liberation and freedom from male dominance. She finally found her liberation and became truly independent after graduating from her final relationship with Tea Cake by killing him.
At the beginning of the novel Janie is forced into marrying Logan Killicks by Nanny who claims that, “Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection” (Hurston 15). Janie’s dreams of falling in love are crushed and all she can do is hope that in marrying
While sitting under the pear tree, Janie notices a bee and a flower and the loving and gentle embrace that occurs between the two. “So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation” (Hurston 11). The revelation that Janie experiences capitalizes upon her immaturity and innocence. Without knowing anything about love, Janie bases her ideals that she wishes to see in a marriage on an interaction between a bee and a flower. Because Janie wishes to find this love, her gullibility leads her to kiss Johnny Taylor, something that her Nanny, detests. Nanny, who does not share the same vision regarding love, believes that marriage should be one where practicality is the most important aspect. To her the thought of emotional based decision, what Janie values in a marriage, is seen as unsuitable to the lifestyle of happiness that she wishes for her granddaughter to have. This directly connects to society because Logan, the man with land and a stable living, is seen as the practical and wise choice for Janie. However, Janie wants a marriage where love is the key component, not practicality. For her a commitment to Logan Killicks is something that deprives her of what she veiws as paradise, and therefore
Through her use of southern black language Zora Neale Hurston illustrates how to live and learn from life’s experiences. Janie, the main character in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a woman who defies what people expect of her and lives her life searching to become a better person. Not easily satisfied with material gain, Janie quickly jumps into a search to find true happiness and love in life. She finally achieves what she has searched for with her third marriage.
Throughout the novel, Janie faces poor treatment and is submissive to all three of her husbands. Therefore, all the hardships and insults that Janie endures in the story allow her to break free and her grandmother’s ideal, that wealth and a social status should be a priority and overcome all other aspects, such as love. Janie returns to Eatonville a new woman; she doesn't care for the opinions of others and continues her way through the town. This shows that Janie at the end of the novel is headstrong and has finally found her independence in a male dominated society. Considering that she was a black woman during the time that the story took place, Janie constructs a comfortable life for herself. Thus, Hurston makes Janie’s character undergo several harsh experiences, abandonment by her mother and she endures abuse from all of husbands, however, not without making her prevail at the end of the novel as she frees herself from the men in her